


Seawrack

by hossgal



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Post-War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-25
Updated: 2006-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3329741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hossgal/pseuds/hossgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, all things come to the Sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seawrack

When the Valar sang the world into being, the song they sang shaped into being first a vast deepness: unfathomed, unbound, tides as yet ungoverned by the moon. The dry land that would become the Middle Earth was drawn forth from the waters - stone by stone, grain by grain. And as the world formed from the harmonies of the Valar, the sea gained a fathoming, acquired shores, and from the song itself learnt a rhythm for the tides.

But the sea remained, and called for that which had departed. It made its own song, a _lingaer_ , to draw back that which had gone. At the edge of the world, the waves ate the shore, clawed at the wind, hungered for all that had been drawn from them. They drank in the earth, grain by grain, as the mountain heights crumbled away. And the sea still wanted. All the parched winds of every quarter rushed from dry lands to the shore, where they did drown, gust after gust, in foam and salt spray, until they were thrown back to the plains and highlands, tempests cast back thick with the scent of kelp and heavy with storms, cast them back to rain down on the land and wash still more of the hills back to the shores of their birth.

Everything came to the sea and the sea drank in all - sand, stone, highest limb of the greatest golden trees of Lothlorien. Raven’s ashen down, drift of fir seed, the petal fallen in the stream - all these came, sooner or late, to the sea.

All these, and the Firstborn of Iluvatar.

In the years after the Third Age, an Elf-prince came to the shore and stood on the wet stones. At his feet, foam wash poured over moss-thick rock and retreated again, leaving behind a veil of golden kelp. Behind him lay all of Middle Earth - wide plains, gold hills, vales dark with firs and ancient oak. Before him, only the waves, the cry of the gulls, and the grey sky.

* * *

The stones of the road to Minas Tirith were damp with rain. Gimli son of Gloin scowled at the tattered clouds as he trudged onwards towards the White City. He had come a great distance - twelve days by the Dwarf paths through the White Mountains, from the Glittering Caves to this last stretch of road, within the shadow of the tall gates.

Seventy days before, a messenger bird had come to the rookery at Aglarond, bearing tidings for the lord of the Glittering Caves. _Come to the White City, Elf-friend, for I have need of your counsel_. And it had been signed with the mark of an Elf-prince of Ithilien.

Seventy days was not a short time, even as the long-lived Dwarves counted them. But the elders of the folk of the Caves had scowled and muttered amongst themselves - _How comes an Elf by this arrogance, than he summons our lord like a hearth-sweep? Such is the nature of Elves, scorn and disdain is their natures, contempt and slight regard. It is right and just, they had said_ , eyes shifting away, not daring to look their king in the face, _that we - that our lord - have naught to do with Elves nor Elvish ways_. Gimli had sat on the high dais in the great hall and chewed his beard ends, silently cursing his folk for being no more than they always had been. Others had begged their master's attention be set on other matters - the pattern of the engravings set in the eastern-most hall of the Caves or to the depth of the newest shaft dug in a fading seam of beryl. In the end, Gimli had gathered up his traveling kit himself and slipped away under cover of dusk, taking the road like a nameless vagabond, instead of as a king of the Dwarf-folk.

Even by the hidden paths of the Dwarves, cut through mountain and hill, it had been a long walk. The turn of the seasons had brought frost back to the high paths, and misting rain to the roads of Gondor. He had kept to the Dwarf-tracks, where no pony could have tread, and he would have gone no swifter, mounted on the roads of Men, but still it had been an unpleasant journey.

 _The Elf had best have the fire laid, and a flagon of ale waiting_ , he thought.

He built an image of it in his head as he walked, and found himself cheered. There would be a wide terrace, laid with the pale marble of Gondor, and curtains hung in the window arcs to shut away the damp. A fire, aye, a bed of bright coals casting a steady, even heat, and a board spread with white bread and rich butter. Roast meats - not yet served, but promised, and the delicate greens of the southlands, cooked in clotted cream. A seat by the fire, with a pipe packed with Shire leaf, and the Elf there, to tell him tales of the southlands and the affairs of Men, or, perhaps, simply to sit in the ruddy fire glow and speak of nothing at all.

Gimli hitched his pack up and took a fresh grip on his walking stick. The walls of Minas Tirith loomed high, and Gimli found his pace quickening. There, the great Gates - reforged and re-hung by the skill of his people, a gift to the King who ruled this city. No, not to the King, but to the friend of many leagues, and many battles. Perhaps Aragorn could be brought away from his councils and his councilors. It would be good to sit with him again, as well.

The taste of the smoke was thick in his mouth, and the fire side so strong in his thoughts, that the young Man hailed Gimli twice before the Dwarf made note.

"My lord Dwarf! My lord Dwarf!" The young Man pushing his way through the travelers crowded inside the Gate wore the uniform of the Guard of Gondor, with a pale cord bound to one shoulder. Courtesy demanded Gimli pause. Then the guard spoke, and his words held Gimli fast. "My lord Dwarf! Legolas Greenleaf is not in the city."

"What do you say?"

The boy was panting. He had run some little ways after Gimli, it seemed, and before that, down from the walls. "He is not here."

Gimli set the end of his walking stick on the flagstones and glared back at the Man looming over him. "Explain yourself."

"Legolas of the Ithilien elves is not in the City. My master Elessar bade me wait at the gate here, and hail you, master Dwarf, when you arrived, so that you would not enter Minas Tirith unaware."

"Where is the Elf then?"

"Sir, no one knows. He had guested with my lord, and, my captain said, spoke with the king regarding yourself and your visit here. My lord the King also looked for your arrival. But he was called away, to the Rohan lands, and when he returned, four days hence, Lord Legolas was no longer in the city."

"He left no word? No one saw him go? He is not easy to miss, you understand, being over tall and strikingly arrogant in his bearing." _Arrogance which I shall have to beat from him, do I find him again. Summon me and then disappear will he?_ But beneath his furious thoughts, Gimli felt fear begin to coil.

More than one hundred years, it had been, since Legolas had gone down to the sea, in the last days of the War of the Ring. He had gone with the Man who would become King of Gondor, and a Dwarf who dared to name an Elf as friend. And there, on the shores of the Great River, the song of the gulls had fallen on the ears of Legolas Greenleaf. From that hour, the Elf was only tarrying in the lands of Middle Earth.

 _For a time, for a month, for a hundred years of Men, who can say_? Legolas said. _The sea is calling - the sea, and the Last Isle._

Gimli found his hands clenched on his walking staff, and his arms trembling from the strain.

"No, my lord, no one saw him leave. My king bade me await you, and give you whatever aid you might desire."

_The sea is calling._

"Any aid?"

"Any thing you do name."

A ghost of a laugh welled up within him. "Then, lad, I need a horse."

* * *

The wind brushed his hair with a rough hand, spun golden strands into tangled mane. Water rose and covered the rocks at his feet; pale surf leaving dark stains on his road-worn boots. Against the push of wind and the hammer of wave was the draw of _lingaer_ , the call West. Caught there, with the taut strand tight about his heart, Legolas wrapt his arms about his knees and trembled.

Breakers rose and fell. The wind pressed against his face, gusting and then fading. The _lingaer_ was unrelenting, unceasing, pulling him towards the horizon. If he cast aside his garments and threw himself into the sea, he would only drown.

This longing would not be stilled by so small a thing.

He bent forward and grasped at the next wave as it fell upon the skerry stones. His fingers passed through the foam, no more substantial than mist in his hand.

Legolas closed his eyes against the horizon and bowed his head, grinding his face against his sleeve. It could only be salt spray that wet his cheeks, nothing more.

* * *

Four days, four days gone and still no word. The mantra kept running through Gimli's mind as he gathered a pack and a horse. Four days, and the unimaginative young officer Aragorn had left to await Gimli was quickly reaching the end of his usefulness.

"My lord dwarf, I am certain that my lord Elessar will return soon - "

"Lad, I have no doubt. This is Aragorn's home, he is sure to return at some point." Gimli tugged at the pack strap and found it too loose for his liking. Putting a foot on the bundle, he took a new grip and put his back into it. "But I will not stay here, idle on his doorstep, 'til he does." Satisfied with the binding, he dragged the bundle to the mounting block in the middle of the stable floor. "Where - oh, there you are, bring him here!"

A stable boy led the narrow-framed grey palfrey up to the block.

"Mind you hold him there, now. " The horse-boy nodded, patting the horse's neck. At Gimli's side, the young officer all but wrung his hands. "My lord Elessar has commanded us to aid you, my lord. Permit us to do more than watch you pack your gear!"

With a grunt, Gimli heaved the pack up and over the saddle. The horse snorted and flicked his ears, but made no move to kick or bite, which Gimli saw as a very good sign. "There is no more watching to be done," he said, fingers securing the load behind the saddle, "for I am finished now." Holding his hand out for the lead, he said to the horse-boy, "Get the door, there's a good lad." To the lieutenant, he said, "You have my thanks, good sir. But the horse and these goods are all that I need. I will move no faster with a patrol to guard me, and I have no fear of the lands to the south."

"My lord Elessar said that he was seeking the Elf-lord among his own people, to the east."

"I know. If he returns with Legolas, tell him I went south, and send someone to find me."

* * *

A trio of rock-shrikes darted past, skimming the waves, dark wings brushing the crests as their cries stabbed at the air. The voices of the birds were a new thing, something neither the crash of the surf nor the hiss of draining waves. Legolas lifted his head.

The birds made another pass before him, then a third, and then broke away, wings overlapping as they flew north. Legolas followed them with his eyes. Their wings were dark wedges, black against the paler sky.

A long arm of the land lay north of the skerry, flung far west so that the tip lay beyond Legolas’s perch. On the distant shoreline, white foam trimmed the black land.

Legolas sat until the spray had soaked into his bones, until he was deaf to every sound except the boom of surf, until the mists rose and drew a sheer cloak over the sun. When the tide went out and left a ragged trail of stones from the skerry to the shore, Legolas rose and set his back to the West. Gust and spray urged him away as the _lingaer_ tugged him back again.

The tide pools trembled under his dim shadow as the small creatures of the edgewater fled from his unsteady feet. Kelp and mats of sea-grass coated the rocks. He fell, twice, when a wash of wave pushed his boots from a steady rock, his eyes coming back from the horizon only as his feet twisted under him. The reach of the waves grew less and less, at the end reduced to a ripple of water over wide stone. The smooth rocks treated him far kinder than the fickle surf. He came to the shore with his cloak soaked to the knee and hands cut, salt stinging in the raw flesh.

When he reached the dark sand above the breaking waves, Legolas turned north and began walking.

* * *

South, he had told the Gondor officer, and south he was bound, but there was a great deal of land between Minas Tirith and the port at Pelargir.

Had there been anyone to ask, he could not have explained how he expected to find Legolas. There was no trace, no tracks. He had never journeyed with Legolas in this country - there was no former camping ground that he could claim as his goal. Pressed, Gimli might have said that he was looking for the sorts of places he thought might call to Legolas.

Or perhaps he would have spoken truth, and said he did not know himself, only that he must seek.

The first day passed far too quickly, and found him still on the road. The travelers on the road were Men, and Men of Gondor, for the most part. They stared at Gimli, but he declined to stare back, stretching his legs to cover as much ground as possible. The grey horse followed willingly enough, without attempting to break away and run for the stable, growing further and further behind them. At nightfall, Gimli found a wooded campsite within sight of the road, with a damp seep for the horse and a fallen log for Gimli to stand on as he tended to the beast. He stacked the harness beside the fire and leaned against it, listening to the wind in the high branches.

He had thought, all his days, that Elves were folk of the woods and fine dwellings. It had been only short years that he had found himself considering them as beings of the sea.

More than twice before, Legolas had left Ithilien and followed the Great River south. Once had been early after the defeat of Mordor, and Gimli had had the story of that from Legolas's own lips - how the Elf had awoken two days south of Minas Tirith with no memory of ever having left the woods of northern Ithilien. This tale had been told on a visit to Ithilien, and he had sat in Legolas's own house. They had laughed, then, and the talk had gone to other follies they each had committed.

The second time, Gimli had only Aragorn's account of three days searching before Legolas returned on his own, silent and drawn. There may have been more, but Legolas had said little of those journeys to anyone.

Gimli knocked his pipe ashes into the fire and, rising, made sure of the rope securing the grey horse. It was the hard ground, he told himself, the hard ground on an old Dwarf's bones, that kept him awake long into the night, staring at the flames.

* * *

The sand under his feet was grey. The cliffs that rose above him on his sword-hand side were iron as well, streaked with veins of black and rust. The sound of the sea struck the cliffs and came back again, so that Legolas walked on through a great cavern of thunder, open to the sky.

When he stopped to rest, the line of land west and north still lay screened by the haze of distance. He folded his legs and sat on the slate-colored sands and watched the waves ascend and retreat. But the lull brought no strength to his limbs, no peace to his mind, and the _lingaer_ still sang as loud as the surf. Soon he rose to his feet and continued on, weary to the blood coursing in his veins.

As he went on, the sea came up and drank down the marks of his feet. Sandpipers ran before him, and crabs shuffled from his path. The skerry became a wavering streak of silver, diminishing into the rising waves. The westward line of land grew slowly closer. It was still a great distance off, and the skerry on the southern horizon, when he came to the river mouth.

The river cut across the beach in a sheet of rough water. Here the cliffs drew back so the river might pour into the sea uncurbed by the high walls. The river was broad but still swift, surface winding and uncurling as the currents beneath jostled for place in the flow, running with haste and power for the sea.

Legolas watched, hesitant, as a great bough rode the river midstream and went on, unchecked by bar or delta. Legolas turned his head to watch it go. The black limb - it could once have been a limb of the golden trees of the Lothlorien grove, as thick as the Elf and twice as tall - floated away, following West.

The call was loud and singing in his heart and bones as he turned away. The wave-roar filled his ears, and the cries of the gulls stung his skin. Beside that, the river ran near silent, no more than a steady shrush in the thickest reeds.

* * *

Early the second day, Gimli left the South Road and struck out through the countryside, following a nameless impulse. The futility of his search was growing clearer, after a day's trek along the road. With no trace to follow, he had thought to question passers-by - perhaps someone had seen the Elf.

But out under the trees, along the paths that ran with the hedgerows, Gimli realized his error. He had been a fool to think Legolas Greenleaf would have kept to a highway of Men when there were hills to wander.

On the rolling downs, the grass waved pale and gold - not the bright sun-colored glory of the Rohan plains in high summer, but still pleasant to the eye and ears. Gimli strode on, the horse walking steadily behind him, its chin brushing at his head on occasion. In the woods, the going was slower, but the shade cast by the trees was welcoming in late morning.

At noon, recalling Aragorn and Legolas's habits on the road, he found a boulder to stand upon and unsaddled the horse, intending to graze it for an hour. Unencumbered, the horse sniffed the ground, but declined to eat until it had dropped to the ground and thrashed briefly, grinding its back into the earth. Afterwards, it clambered to its feet and began cropping at the grass.

Gimli sat on the rock with the other end of the lead and lit his pipe, watching the horse graze, not seeing it.

 _The sea is calling_.

The lands he passed through now had never known the hand of Sauron. They were not wild lands, for all that they seemed unpeopled - he had seen a score of smoke trails over the course of the morning, and crossed half a dozen narrow lanes. But the Elves had never made a homeland here, nor planted the long-lived groves of which they were so fond. There was no reason for an Elf to be here, unless he were bound elsewhere.

Even less for a Dwarf, or for the works of a Dwarf - this was a land tied to the seasons of Men, not the ages of Dwarf-crafted stone.

Gimli rubbed his eyes. _All_ _things end. Did you think you would live forever, just to bedevil his days?_

To say _yes_ , though, meant admitting he had considered the issue. And on this, Gimli thought grimly, his mind had been curiously blank.

The horse had finished its grazing and came to him, then, to slobber green upon his jerkin. Gimli sighed and went to fetch the saddle and pack again.

* * *

Legolas's feet found a path along the riverbank, a narrow trace for the tiny deer of the river-brush and reeds. The damp sand sucked at his boots and laid green tinged flecks on the leather. A bittern rose from cover nearly under his heel, crying out with a sound that, for a breath, over-rode the surf. Legolas did not look back.

The cliff walls rose again, solid stone to ward away the sight and sound of the sea. Now the reeds crowded close to the river until they all stood knee deep in the surge. The trace ran through brush now, hip-high thickets of haw and goldtongue, and the ground had gone to gravel and stone. The wind whistled through the haw branches and the current rocked the reeds, made them sigh against each other.

A white-winged gull flew overhead, calling out in a voice like a lost child. In the stillness that followed, Legolas could hear the crash of surf. He stopped, head tilted back, to watch the gull as it swept back and forth, the stone walls swallowing its cries. Against the pale sky, the gull was a flicker of ivory and could not hold Legolas’s gaze.

He went on, following the river.

 There was no ford. Long before he came to a place to cross the current, a tributary joined the river, pouring white froth into a flow that had begun to moderate. Legolas stared at the old river, at the new, and could not hear the sea at all for the roar of the white water. The grass rustled at his feet - a hare, bold enough to sniff at his worn cloak but not so fearless as to meet his eye. The hare turned and loped away, heading upstream beside the new river. Legolas followed.

* * *

Late the third day, Gimli was working his way across an open stretch of downs when he caught the scent of an old fire. The horse threw up its head at the same moment and blew damp air out its nostrils. Gimli stood frozen, tasting the wind and the old, stale ashes carried on the air. Then the wind changed and the scent was gone.

 _It could be anything_ , he thought _, A hunter's camp, a woodcutter's fire, even some little village, here away from the river_. But the horse still stood, ears up and twitching. Gimli gathered up the lead and began quartering back and forth, up the path of the wind. Two passes, and he caught the scent of ashes again, this time stronger. He followed the wind gust up another slope, the horse nearly treading on his heels.

The fire was cold and dead, a drift of pale ash on a wind-blown ridge. Gimli saw the firepatch first. He did not recognize the grey heap lying beside it. The cloak of Lorien looked like nothing so much as a pile of stones, and the figure beneath the folds was as still as the earth he lay upon.

* * *

The cliffs crouched closer. Now the haw brushes were more rare, pushed aside by a rougher herb, with leaves the size and shape of a sparrow’s eyes and small, ivory flowers that beckoned the bees. When his sleeve caught the branch tips and made the blossoms sway, the bees rose, strumming furiously, before they returned to their cups.

When he came to the next confluence, Legolas followed the new creek without hesitating, and the next. The waterway became a brook, and loud with the merry dance it made over stone and pool. Ferns were thick among the brush, and young pines that had shed years of needles to layer upon the ground. The brook passed through a vale so thick with trees that Legolas could scarcely see one turn of the brook to the next. The vale slopes spread apart, then close again, and when they returned it was in a series of great sheets of stone, smooth walls of pale grey broken by dark hollows and the damp trickles of waterfalls.

Deep in the vale, one such rill ran over a moss-thick stone and then a narrow crevice, rough granite washed clean by the flow. Legolas found a foothold and climbed up the cliffside. The wall was smooth to his touch, but not slick. As he went, he clung to the trailing vines, his feet sure on the stone itself. Twice his height above the trail, he stopped, balanced on a firm ledge, and swept the vines aside.

The cave behind the vines was an empty mouth, low-crowned and damp with the scent of growing things. Inside, the air was cool, the stone floor dry under his palm. When he released the curtain of vines, the hanging greenery shut away the day. Legolas crept to the back of the cave, feeling his way with his hands, fingers sweeping over grit and smooth stone.

Against the back wall, he curled in about himself, folded his arms and set his back against the cave wall. There was no light, no sun, no sound of the sea. All about him was granite, solid and massive, holding him, wrapt about him. In the silence of the cave, his heartbeat was the only sound. The darkness held him as close as the bones of the earth. For a long time he lay awake listening to the stone beneath his ear as it gave the echo back again.

* * *

It was beyond Gimli's efforts to move the Elf any great distance - he could carry the weight easily enough, but Legolas's length would not stay clear of the earth, no matter how Gimli held him. He thought to use the horse - there was a phrase that Legolas had used, to persuade a mount to kneel. With some little effort, he brought the horse to Legolas and spoke the words, as kindly as he could. But the beast only danced in confusion, once going halfway down before surging up again, mouth working at the steel bar and sides heaving in distress.

"Saah, saaah," he said, holding the reins as firmly as his temper. "Saaaah, quiet beast, good pony, watch those feet, stand, stand." The horse stood and looked at him, then at Legolas, and Gimli thought for a moment that the horse understood what was needed. But when he led the horse back to the Elf's still figure, it only snorted and tried to jerk away again. He brought the horse back once more, to no better end.

 _All this way, and still my hands fumble at the task. Oh, my friend, I meant not to fail you_. In the end, he found a bit of a stone outcropping and used it to stand upon as he untangled the horse's harness. Free of the straps, the horse fell to the ground and rolled.

"Now you lay down! Thick-headed glutton! Worthless wastrel!" It was all Gimli could do, not to shout. When the horse arose and shook the dust away, Gimli pounded a stake into the earth and made fast the lead rope to it.

"Stay there, and do not wander." The horse fell to grazing. Gimli went back to the ridge where Legolas lay.

The Elf had not moved. Gimli bent over him, one hand on Legolas' pale cheek and feeling with his thumb for the puff of air that meant the Elf still breathed. Satisfied, he tucked the cloak closer, then set out to rebuild the fire.

There were scant gleanings to be found. Frost had not settled on the riverlands, and all the brush was yet green. Legolas had used some scraps of gall-sickened oak, all of it now ashes. There was an aspen grove half a mile away, and any of the saplings would have surrendered to Gimli's ax, but they would have yielded only green wood. He thought he would have to make do with knotted grasses and broken weeds, before a cut opened before him. In the sharp-sided ravine he found the shattered remains of a hickory tree. It was the work of less than an hour to hack the limbs into smaller pieces and drag them up the slope.

Gimli sat beside the fire as the western sky grew dark. Embers flew up as he set more wood on the flames. The red glint reflected in the horse's eyes as the beast snuffled closer in the dusk. Legolas slept on.

 _Fool,_ he thought. Twice a fool - once for permitting so careless an assignment of affection, and again for thinking such a thing would affect the world, after it had been hammered and quenched and ground into being.

_He is Elf-kind. He will leave these lands._

His fist clenched on the fire-blackened branch - _that all the skill and craft of a Dwarf should come to this, to sit by the fire and watch the night grow dark!_ \- then, slowly, opened, and let the stick fall. Rising, he went to where Legolas lay, and, taking the edge of the ground cloth beneath him, dragged the elf closer to the fire. There he arranged both their cloaks, and the blanket from his pack, and gathered the elf to him, so that he could feel the shift of Legolas's body as he breathed.

* * *

Legolas came out from the cave as slowly as he had entered in, and far more reluctant, for the stone beneath his ear now had a heartbeat of its own, and breathed as well, a gusty bellows-like shifting that was nothing like the sea.

Beyond his eyes there was a fire burnt down to glowing coals, red as blood in the darkness. The light was a heat to his eyes, burning, demanding. Legolas shut his eyes again and curled closer to the firm wall behind him, and the wall drew him closer and breathed smoke-filled breath about his ears. The weight of Gimli’s arm held him to the Dwarf. Legolas clung to that - the muscle and mail that gave resolution to Gimli’s hold, the sound of his draw on the pipe, the cloying scent of the burning leaf. So long as he lay silent and still, the world was no more than this moment, this place.

He might have slept again, before Gimli spoke, and gave the world back its horizons.

"You were gone a long time, lad." He knew the sounds for words, and their meaning, but the shaping of a reply was so far from him that Legolas only nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Nor could he bear to hear any of Gimli's words in return. He would only repeat words that had been spoken before: _where did you go_ and _was it the sea_. As if there were any other madness that set Legolas to wandering, that left him to stare into the fire embers for days at a time.

 _Yes, yes, it was the sea, it was the_ lingaer _, and one day I shall follow it._ He had said the words before, shouted them in anger and despair at the ignorant, harsh-handed Dwarf. But it seemed the words had been as bitter in Gimli’s ears as they had been in Legolas’s mouth. He left them unspoken, now, and still he felt their echo, in the catch in Gimli’s breathing.

But Gimli only said, "You had me worried, there for a time." Legolas swallowed the fear down, and nodded again. Gimli sighed, a great gust that made Legolas’s head rock with the motion of the Dwarf’s body. He was aware now of how he lay, curled tight like a chick in the egg, pressed against the solid stone of Gimli’s trunk, his head against Gimli’s chest and one of the Dwarf’s hands shaping the crown of his head.

He could see as well that they sat beside a campfire on the rolling downs of south Ithilien, that the embers were near gone to ash, and that the feel of dawn was in the air. Beyond the fire’s reach a pale horse of the Rohan lines grazed. Far away, he could see the dark line on the horizon that was the White Mountains.

And none of this was as dear to him as the heartbeat beneath his ear, and the breath that brushed his face, and the hand that cupped his head, fingers moving over his skin, tangled in his hair.

Age sat on Gimli’s face, in the lines of his eyes, the skin of his wrists. Silver was thick in his hair, and the sea was calling Legolas home.

The Elf shut his eyes against the grey light of dawn.

"I am sorry to grieve you." At his words, the hand on his head pressed closer, then went back to stroking his hair.

"There is nothing you could do, no place you could go, that would give me despair, save if you went alone, and left me behind. Swear to me, that you will not do this." The hand tugged at his hair, and then relaxed. "My friend, swear."

Legolas could only shake his head. He felt tears on his face, salty as sea spray, and turned to bury his face against Gimli’s tunic. The Dwarf’s hand wiped the tears away, his fingers wet with both their weeping.

They sat together, hearts grey with grief, so as the sun rose and spread gold on the land.

* * *

 

_end_

**Author's Note:**

>  **Story Notes:** Set post-Ring War. Slightly AU/futurefic. _Lingaer_ is from the elvish, lin – 'sing, make a musical sound' and gaer, 'the sea.'  
>  **Author Notes:** Written as a present for Victoria P, as possibly the latest b-day ever. Big thanks to SE Parsons - who was clear on how the first version didn't work - and to Florastuart for betaing, it was great working with you both. Also with thanks to Cofax, who sent me a copy of The Silmarillion.
> 
> This work is added to AO3 because of the import of HASA works to AO3 - this work was not orginally posted there but only due to on-going laziness on my part.


End file.
